Section 6: Overview of Lamont and Sinclair Genealogy

Overview of Lamont and Sinclair Genealogy

Prepared in July 2010 by John S. Lamont (b. 1939)

Overview of LAMONT GENEALOGY

John Duncan Lamont’s grandfather, John, and his grandmother, Janet, were married on

2^nd  February 1838 at Lochbroom, near Ullapool in Scotland.  They immigrated with their four children to Australia on the Nelson arriving in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria  on 11^th November 1848.  John tried his luck on the goldfields with moderate success but was destined to be a farmer.  He purchased his first 80 acres at Birragurra, south of Geelong in 1857.  In 1866, he took up a selection they named Dundonnell Estate.  Over the next sixteen years John and his sons systematically set about increasing their land holdings.  His boys took up several selections in the Wimmera district of Victoria and by 1882, they had holdings of 2,386 acres and a further 824 acres of land leased.

Jack’s father, Murdoch, the eldest son of John and Janet, was born at Lochbroom in 1839.  He was nine years old when they arrived in Australia. He could read but not write and had no formal education.  He married Mary McKenzie on Christmas Day 1867 in Geelong and in 1874 they moved to Rupanyup in the Wimmera.  The family, by then, had most of their landholdings in this district.  They named their property ‘Oaklands’.

Murdoch died of pneumonia in 1893 at the age of 54, leaving his wife and five children, Hector, Hugh, John Duncan [Jack], Marion [Minnie] and Andrew.  Murdoch’s wife, Mary, died in 1900.  As they both died intestate, the family estates took a bit of sorting out.  The boys continued working as Lamont Brothers but by 1908 they split up the partnership and went they own separate ways, with Jack and Ina moving to Harefield in at the end of 1909.

Overview of SINCLAIR GENEALOGY

Christina Annie Sinclair (Ina) married John Duncan Lamont at Lubeck in 1908. Her grandfather was William Sinclair who immigrated to South Australia with his brother and three sisters on the Palmyra arriving in 1839.

 

The first we know of William Sinclair is that he went north and worked mowing kangaroo grass with a scythe for 12 shillings a day. He then moved to a station shepherding sheep for six months.  William then learned about bootmaking and set up a boot store in Clare that he ran for nine years.  When the gold rush started he went to Victoria, returning to Clare after a short time, before trying the goldfields once again. He subsequently returned to Clare and bought a farm and worked it for nine years.

In 1860, Victoria looked promising and William and his family moved by bullock wagon to the Wimmera area where he farmed for five years without much success.  They then moved to Lubeck and took up an initial selection of 320 acres, subsequently adding another 1200 acres between Lubeck and Rupanyup that they called ‘Roslin’. He lost his sight in 1886 and died a year later.

William must have married Christina Isabella McRae in about 1845.  She was apparently a wonderful woman and died in 1914 at the age of ninety. She spoke Gaelic all her life and could still knit a pair of socks in a day, right up to the time she died.

They had nine children and only five lived past infancy.  Three of their children died in 1860 from typhoid on their way over to the Wimmera from Clare in South Australia.  Their second surviving son was Colin William Sinclair and he married Eliza Richardson about 1885.

Colin William Sinclair and his wife, Eliza, had five children.  The eldest child was Ina, followed by four boys William, Colin, Eric and Archibald.

Their family farm called ‘Coolabah’, was also near Lubeck.  Colin unfortunately died in 1901 at the age of 48, and it was a big task for Eliza and the boys to carry on the farm business, especially when the three eldest boys went off to the war in 1914 and 1916.  

Prior to the war, Ina married Jack Lamont and they went to Harefield in 1909.